Judge Asher Grunis was appointed on Friday to be the Supreme Court’s new Chief Justice, replacing outgoing president Dorit Beinisch who retires this month. Grunis first became a judge in 1988, and was appointed to the Supreme Court in 2003.
The Knesset recently passed legislation called the “Grunis Law” which permitted Grunis to be named the Chief Justice. The law previously did not allow judges to become the court’s president if they were within 3 years of their 70th birthday. Grunis was born in 1945. The “Grunis Law” was introduced by Yaakov “Katzele” Katz of the National Union (Ichud Leumi) party.
Previously, the only chance Grunis had of being named president was if Beinisch would have retired a few months earlier.
Grunis specializes in civil and commercial law, and is not know for ‘judicial activism”, an issue that colored the tenures of his immediate predecessors Dorit Beinisch and Aharon Barak.